Orthographic Judgment Research Articles

A thorough examination of cue specificity and task-appropriateness in defining focal and nonfocal prospective memory tasks

ABSTRACT Prospective memory (PM) – memory for future intentions – has a core term called focality which describes how closely a PM task relates to an ongoing task. When a close relationship exists between an ongoing and PM task, the task is classified as focal (loose relationships are classified as nonfocal). Competing PM theories differ primarily in explanations for how focality changes participants’ approaches. Researchers classify PM intentions as focal or nonfocal in two ways: (1) task appropriateness, congruency (TAP) or incongruency (TIP) of processing to complete both tasks, and (2) cue specificity, specific or general task cues. Independently manipulating this ambiguity in defining “focality” was our current focus. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group, a focal PM condition, or one of three nonfocal conditions. Their ongoing task involved a semantic judgment (Experiment 1) or an orthographic judgment (Experiment 2). Cue specificity impacted PM accuracy consistently, favouring specific cues. Task-appropriateness impacted PM accuracy in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2 which showed protective effects for specific, whole-word PM cues – emphasizing the role that deeper processing has on PM success. These studies highlight the ambiguity in the operational definition of focality and provide the groundwork for continued refinement of the definition.

Bilingual advantage in L3 vocabulary acquisition: evidence of a generalized learning benefit among classroom-immersion children

AbstractThe present study explored whether emergent bilingual children showed enhanced abilities to learn L3 vocabulary including written, spoken and conceptual forms compared to monolinguals, and the impact of L2/L3 cross-language similarities on such an effect. To this end, we contrasted the English word learning performance of French fifth-graders attending either a monolingual school program or a classroom-immersion program with German as an L2. Half of the items to be learned were German/English (L2/L3) cognate words while the other half were monolingual English (L3) words. Learning was assessed with a forced-choice recognition task, a go/no-go auditive recognition task and an orthographic judgment task. Results yielded a generalized bilingual advantage, with classroom-immersion children outperforming monolinguals on all tasks, irrespective of cognateness, except for the orthographic task. These findings advocate for a bilingual advantage in children that is globally not driven by the specific language properties of cognates, except for the written modality.

Identifying the unique role of orthographic working memory in a componential model of Hong Kong kindergarteners’ Chinese written spelling

We sought to test a componential model of Chinese written spelling, including the role of orthographic working memory (OWM), among Hong Kong kindergartners. One hundred seventeen kindergartners were recruited. OWM was measured using a visual orthographic judgment and a delayed copying task. Orthographic knowledge, semantic knowledge, and visual–motor skills were assessed via a set of cognitive–linguistic measures. Model comparison yielded the best fitting measurement model, which consisted of four factors, namely, OWM, orthographic knowledge, semantic knowledge, and visual–motor skills. A structural equation model indicated that 79% of the variance in Chinese spelling could be explained by these four factors. OWM was the strongest correlate of Chinese written spelling. These results highlight the fact that OWM is a predominant and distinctive correlate of Chinese written spelling acquisition.

Lexical processing and distributional knowledge in sound–spelling mapping in a consistent orthography: A longitudinal study of reading and spelling in dyslexic and typically developing children

ABSTRACTThis study examined the ability to master lexical processing and use knowledge of the relative frequency of sound–spelling mappings in both reading and spelling. Twenty-four dyslexic and dysgraphic children and 86 typically developing readers were followed longitudinally in 3rd and 5th grades. Effects of word regularity, word frequency, and probability of sound–spelling mappings were examined in two experimental tasks: (a) spelling to dictation; and (b) orthographic judgment. Dyslexic children showed larger regularity and frequency effects than controls in both tasks. Sensitivity to distributional information of sound–spelling mappings was already detected by third grade, indicating early acquisition even in children with dyslexia. Although with notable differences, knowledge of the relative frequencies of sound–spelling mapping influenced both reading and spelling. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and empirical implications.

Association of DCDC2 Polymorphisms with Normal Variations in Reading Abilities in a Chinese Population.

The doublecortin domain-containing 2 (DCDC2) gene, which is located on chromosome 6p22.1, has been widely suggested to be a candidate gene for dyslexia, but its role in typical reading development over time remains to be clarified. In the present study, we explored the role of DCDC2 in contributing to the individual differences in reading development from ages 6 to 11 years by analysing data from 284 unrelated children who were participating in the Chinese Longitudinal Study of Reading Development (CLSRD). The associations of eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DCDC2 with the latent intercept and slope of children’s reading scores were examined in the first step. There was significant support for an association of rs807724 with the intercept for the reading comprehension measure of reading fluency, and the minor “G” allele was associated with poor reading performance. Next, we further tested the rs807724 SNP in association with the reading ability at each tested time and revealed that, in addition to significant associations with the two main reading measures (reading fluency and Chinese character reading) over multiple testing occasions, this SNP also showed associations with reading-related cognitive skills, including morphological production, orthographic judgment and phonological processing skills (rapid number naming, phoneme deletion, and tone detection). This study provides support for DCDC2 as a risk gene for reading disability and suggests that this gene is also operative for typical reading development in the Han population.

Association of the DYX1C1 Dyslexia Susceptibility Gene with Orthography in the Chinese Population

Several independent studies have supported the association of DYX1C1 with dyslexia, but its role in general reading development remains unclear. Here, we investigated the contribution of this gene to reading, with a focus on orthographic skills, in a sample of 284 unrelated Chinese children aged 5 to 11 years who were participating in the Chinese Longitudinal Study of Reading Development. We tested this association using a quantitative approach for Chinese character reading, Chinese character dictation, orthographic judgment, and visual skills. Significant or marginally significant associations were observed at the marker rs11629841 with children's orthographic judgments at ages 7 and 8 years (all P values<0.020). Significant associations with Chinese character dictation (all P values<0.013) were also observed for this single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at ages 9, 10, and 11 years. Further analyses revealed that the association with orthographic skills was specific to the processing of specific components of characters (P values<0.046). No association was found at either SNP of rs3743205 or rs57809907. Our findings suggest that DYX1C1 influences reading development in the general Chinese population and supports a universal effect of this gene.

Attention resource allocation deficits in patients with nonfluent aphasia in Chinese character processing

Objective To determine whether attention allocation deficits contribute to nonfluent aphasia during orthography, phonology, and semantic processing with Chinese characters. Methods Sixteen patients and sixteen controls participated in single and dual tasks. In the single task participants were required to read Chinese characters silently and to make radical, semantic, and final sound judgments (for example, whether the charactersincluded the sound 'ang' ) simultaneously. During the dual task the only difference was that the participants wereasked to read the presented characters aloud and make the same three judgments. Reaction time and error rate were recorded and analysed. Results Reaction times in orthographic judgment were significantly longer for patients than for controls in both task setups. The error rate was also significantly higher. The patients' reaction times in makingphonological judgments in the dual task were significantly longer than in the single task, but there was no significantdifference in error rates between the patients and the controls. In making semantic judgments, neither reaction times nor error rates differed significantly with either the single or dual task protocol. Conclusion Attention allocation deficits play a key role in Chinese character orthographic and phonological processing for nonfluent aphasia sufferers. Key words: Nonfluent aphasia; Language processing; Attention resource allocation

Neural correlates of priming effects in children during spoken word processing with orthographic demands

Priming effects were examined in 40 children (9–15 years old) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An orthographic judgment task required participants to determine if two sequentially presented spoken words had the same spelling for the rime. Four lexical conditions were designed: similar orthography and phonology (O +P +), similar orthography but different phonology (O +P −), similar phonology but different orthography (O −P +), and different orthography and phonology (O −P −). In left superior temporal gyrus, there was lower activation for targets in O +P + than for those in O −P − and higher accuracy was correlated with stronger activation across all lexical conditions. These results provide evidence for phonological priming in children and greater elaboration of phonological representations in higher skill children, respectively. In left fusiform gyrus, there was lower activation for targets in O +P + and O +P − than for those in O −P −, suggesting that visual similarity resulted in orthographic priming even with only auditory input. In left middle temporal gyrus, there was lower activation for targets in O +P + than all other lexical conditions, suggesting that converging orthographic and phonological information resulted in a weaker influence on semantic representations. In addition, higher reading skill was correlated with weaker activation in left middle temporal gyrus across all lexical conditions, suggesting that higher skill children rely to a lesser degree on semantics as a compensatory mechanism. Finally, conflict effects but not priming effects were observed in left inferior frontal gyrus, suggesting that this region is involved in resolving conflicting orthographic and phonological information but not in perceptual priming.

Visual and Auditory Morphological Priming in Adults With Developmental Dyslexia

The quality of implicit morphological knowledge in adult Hebrew readers with developmental dyslexia was investigated. The priming paradigm was used to examine whether these adults extract and represent morphemic units similarly to normal readers during online word recognition. The group with dyslexia as a whole did not exhibit priming with visual presentation as opposed to both age- and reading-level controls. Priming was absent when the prime and target words shared a morpheme and even when the prime and the target were identical. Only the students with phonological dyslexia, who exhibited relatively good performance in the orthographic judgment task, exhibited repetition priming but not morphological priming. Strong repetition and morphological priming effects were found for participants with dyslexia when the stimuli were auditory. The implications of the dissociation between visual and auditory priming for the locus of the deficit in morphological processing during word recognition are discussed.

Do Italian dyslexic children use the lexical reading route efficiently? An orthographic judgment task

The study uses an orthographic judgment task to evaluate the efficiency of the lexical reading route in Italian dyslexic children. It has been suggested that Italian dyslexic children rely prevalently on the sub-word-level routine for reading. However, it is not easy to test the lexical reading route in Italian directly because of the lack of critical items (irregular words), so visual lexical decision tasks and the comprehension/detection of pseudo-homophones are often used. While the former may also be solved on the basis of visual familiarity or phonological re-codification, the latter also involves conceptual and syntactic skills. Eleven dyslexic children participated in the study, performing an orthographic judgment task on stimuli with two phonologically plausible spellings, of which only one was orthographically correct. Their performance was compared with those of 11 proficient readers. The dyslexic children showed selective impairment in detecting phonologically plausible errors, but their performance was normal when required to judge errors inserted in words with regular orthography, i.e., devoid of orthographic ambiguity, and for which a sub-word-level reading procedure is sufficient to guarantee a good performance. Overall, data are coherent with a diagnosis of surface dyslexia, with most children showing defective orthographic lexical processing.

Neural mechanisms underlying the processing of Chinese words: An fMRI study

The present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying orthographic, phonological and semantic processing of single character Chinese words. Twelve right-handed native Chinese speakers participated in the study. Three fundamental linguistic tasks including orthographic judgment, phonological matching and semantic association task were used. Our results demonstrated robust activation in the left posterior inferior temporal cortex (BA 37) for all three tasks. While the phonological matching task produced left-lateralized activation in the inferior frontal and parietal regions, semantic association task showed considerable bilateral activation in the inferior frontal and occipito-parietal regions. Direct comparison between phonological matching and semantic association task yielded semantic related activation in the anterior portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47) and the right inferior frontal region (Broca's homology; BA 45). Behaviorally, there was no difference in response time between phonological matching and semantic association task. Our findings suggested that differential neural pathways were involved in the processing of meaning and sound of single-character Chinese words. The present study provided systemic information of the neural substrates underlying the processing of different components of Chinese language.

Resampling approach to statistical inference: bootstrapping from event-related potentials data.

We propose the use of the bootstrap resampling technique as a tool to assess the within-subject reliability of experimental modulation effects on event-related potentials (ERPs). The assessment of the within-subject reliability is relevant in all those cases when the subject score is obtained by some estimation procedure, such as averaging. In these cases, possible deviations from the assumptions on which the estimation procedure relies may lead to severely biased results and, consequently, to incorrect functional inferences. In this study, we applied bootstrap analysis to data from an experiment aimed at investigating the relationship between ERPs and memory processes. ERPs were recorded from two groups of subjects engaged in a recognition memory task. During the study phase, subjects in Group A were required to make an orthographic judgment on 160 visually presented words, whereas subjects in Group B were only required to pay attention to the words. During the test phase all subjects were presented with the 160 previously studied words along with 160 new words and were required to decide whether the current word was "old" or "new." To assess the effect of word imagery value, half of the words had a high imagery value and half a low imagery value. Analyses of variance performed on ERPs showed that an imagery-induced modulation of the old/new effect was evident only for subjects who were not engaged in the orthographic task during the study phase. This result supports the hypothesis that this modulation is due to some aspect of the recognition memory process and not to the stimulus encoding operations that occur during the recognition memory task. However, bootstrap analysis on the same data showed that the old/new effect on ERPs was not reliable for all the subjects. This result suggests that only a cautious inference can be made from these data.